Ravenholm
by LightningsShadow118
Summary: Stranded in the dreaded Ravenholm, Gordon Freeman does some meditating on one of his closest allies.


The clouds that hung over Ravenholm, much like anyone who happened across its borders, chose to cluster together and hurry past; to forget that they ever saw...

_... That's the old passage to Ravenholm..._

The town which had once been a flourishing haven to the Resistance and civilians in need of shelter, was now..... no. There are no words to describe it. None that I can conjure.

After the Combine found it, it's skies poured down headcrab shells. Since that gruesome day, no one has ever lived there. Not for long, at least.

Only the headcrab zombies walk in Ravenholm.

They trudge on like embodied ghosts, forever haunting the streets and buildings; doomed to live past their death. Their choked moans and slurred pleas can be heard from far beyond the walls, and it's enough to rattle any human being.

It's enough to let everyone know what Ravenholm has become:

A symbol of Dr. Breen's merciless power, and of what he's willing to do to the innocent in order to keep that power.

_... We don't go there anymore..._

I*~*I-I*~*I

A crow soared overhead, calling to another far off. Gordon paid it no mind.

The narrow clearing he'd found himself stuck in (with, as Fate would have it, a sizable amount of zombies, a few even poisonous, that enjoyed appearing out of nowhere every time he turned his back) appeared to hit a standstill. Such had been rare thus far in his journey, but it was still an opportunity, and Gordon Freeman was not one to let opportunity pass.

He sat on the edge of a higher roof that handily gave him a view of the whole clearing. In one hand was his chipped, stained, cherished crowbar, smeared with the yellows and reds of alien and human blood alike. In the other hand was a tattered, but mostly clean rag taken from one of the deserted buildings.

Gordon didn't fully understand _why_ he felt the need to clean his crowbar. He wasn't _done_ with it; that much was certain. There would be plenty more zombies to kill, and if he even made it out of Ravenholm alive (after all, despite how far the physicist had come, he was by no means a god) there would be Combine, there would be more headcrabs, and if he remembered those maps correctly from Black Mesa East, he might be heading into antlion territory. He'd have his work cut out for him, to say the least.

And yet, despite all that lay ahead of him, Gordon allowed his hands to mop up the fresh blood and scrape off the dried. He swiped the rag over the hook's tip, cleaning out some small chunks of alien flesh.

Freeman then _looked_ at the crowbar, but not through the eyes of a scientist, or a man fighting to survive. He looked at his crowbar the way one looked at a memory, _noticing_ each detail while seeing their shadow in his mind's eye, instead of over-analyzing.

He had first found this crowbar at Black Mesa after triggering the Resonance Cascade, and all Hell breaking loose. It had been lying on the floor in front of a locked glass door, where the iron bar had first proven its usefulness. That same crowbar had been at his beck and call ever since, and it had yet to disappoint him.

'Is it strange,' Gordon thought, 'to feel sentimental about a _crowbar_ of all things?'

He tossed the rag to the ground below and inspected his handiwork. A few stains still lingered here and there, the red enamel was chipped at, and the hooked edge was a bit dull. It was nothing like when he'd first found it, not shining and new, but the wounds it carried gave it a history, tied it to the Black Mesa Incident, and...

'..._wounds?_'

It _was_ strange to him, now that Gordon considered it. His crowbar had become something of a close friend in this war, like Barney. .... He'd have to find some way to thank Barney for finding his old crowbar, if he ever saw him again.

The rebel scientist held the weapon up so that the faintest glint of moonlight mixed with the streetlights on it's dingy surface. A crowbar... an inanimate object..... a trustworthy friend in dire times....

Gordon Freeman smiled up at his old friend, and even chuckled.

"Huh."

Gordon faintly heard coming from behind a distant building, familiar, clumsy steps and throaty cries; more headcrab zombies had found their way to him.

He stood up and zoomed in on the suspected corner. Sure enough, four or five zombies emerged in a cluster, ready to take Freeman down.

He wasn't frightened by this; he'd taken much worse than a few regular zombies. He gripped his crowbar tighter, the faint smirk back on his lips.

'Well, old crowbar... we're not dead yet.'

He descended from the low roof and ran for the necrotics without hesitation.

The Crowbar did not disappoint.

**END**


End file.
